For those who like using other tools on their virtual keyboard aside from letters, the Gboard app has gotten better with this latest update. There is now a new setting on your Gboard called “Emojis, Stickers & GIFs” that should make it easier for you to control and search for these “expressive media”. The descriptions of certain keys and parts of this section are also now much easier to understand. This way, it should be easier to insert emojis, stickers, and GIFs to your conversations and posts.
9 to 5 Google shares that when your Gboard keyboard is updated to the latest version, you’ll see the “Emojis, Stickers & GIFs” section replace the Search section in the settings. Tapping it will bring you to sub-sections dealing with Layout and Suggestions. The Layout part has the controls that were previously in the main Preferences or Advanced sections. The descriptions for each of the items are much easier to understand now and so easier to toggle on and off.
The emoji switch key will give you a dedicated key to access emoji but remove the language switch. The Emoji fast-access row will show the most popular and most used emojis on the main keyboard while emojis in symbols keyboard will show your recently used emojis. The emoji with physical keyboard will let the alt key show the emoji keyboard. You just need to toggle them on or off for the best emoji settings for you.
The Suggestions sub menu has the settings from the Text correction section before. You have a toggle for Predictive content search which will suggest for expressive media content to browse. There’s also one for suggestions while typing which will show you the suggested emojis and stickers on the suggestion strip. The emoji stickers toggle will suggest stickers when you tap on emojis in the emoji keyboard.
This new settings with the Emojis, Stickers, and GIFs in Gboard is currently on Android 12 only, with version 10.8. But we may probably see it in older versions since it’s not really something that should be exclusive to the new OS.
